Crossing the Line

In this week’s issue, Mark Singer reports on allegations that have surfaced in the online running community that a dentist in Michigan named Kip Litton has cheated repeatedly in marathons across the U.S. Although Litton has been disqualified from at least a handful of marathons and has admitted to inventing the only marathon he ever claimed to have won outright (along with a list of twenty-eight fictional finishers), he denies ever cheating in a race. Nevertheless, the relentless scrutiny of his exploits has placed him, Singer writes, “at the center of one of the strangest controversies in amateur sports history.”

Marathon racing lends itself particularly well to strange controversies, largely because the act of running one to completion is, essentially, excruciating. The modern marathon was conceived in Athens for the first Olympic Games, in 1896, as a tribute to the legend of Pheidippides, a courier who ran roughly twenty-five miles, from a great battle near the town of Marathon to Athens, and then collapsed and died from the effort. Given the outcome, one suspects that Pheidippides would have taken a shortcut if one had been available.

The original Olympic course retraced the route from Marathon to Athens along rough country roads. Of seventeen runners, twelve were Greek and eight failed to finish. To the host city, it meant the world that the winner of this first official marathon, Spiridon Louis, was “a child of the soil.” Another Greek runner followed and was awarded silver. When Spiridon Belokas came next, he completed an improbable Greek medal sweep and was rapturously received by the crowd. But the fourth place finisher, from Hungary, contested the result, charging that Belokas had covered part of the course in a carriage. This was true; Greek elation mingled with disgrace. Belokas lost his medal, but won the distinction of being the first person ever disqualified for cheating in a marathon.

His example was taken up in the 1904 Olympic marathon, in St. Louis. Ninety-degree heat combined with a hilly course of dusty roads made completion of the race impossible for seventeen of the thirty-two athletes. U.S. runner Frederick Lorz, meanwhile, crossed the finish line in what appeared to be a relatively breezy three hours and thirteen minutes. It took runner-up Thomas Hicks—who, incidentally, was almost dying from a performance-enhancing dose of strychnine—another sixteen minutes to finish. After that, considerably more time elapsed before officials realized that Lorz had withdrawn from the race back at the ninth mile.

Lorz dropped out because of exhaustion. His manager had driven him some ten miles before their car suddenly broke down. Feeling refreshed, Lorz amused himself by easily running the remainder of the course. He played along with being fêted as the winner right up to the medal ceremony, where he was found out. Officials had learned that Lorz was seen waving at spectators along his ride, and he readily admitted his charade when questioned, attempting to pass it off as a practical joke. Unmoved, the Amateur Athletic Union swiftly banned Lorz for life. According to a contemporaneous magazine article, “Eight months later he was reinstated through the efforts of eastern men on the ground that he was temporarily insane”—which allowed him to enter, and legitimately win, the 1905 Boston Marathon.

With the third London Games well underway, we should spare a moment to recall the most famous incident of the first London Olympiad, in 1908: the marathon finish of a diminutive Italian named Dorando Pietri. It was the first marathon to be run at the now standard 26.2 miles, and the hardship of the race was compounded by unseasonably hot and muggy weather. A reporter for the London Timeswrote that the afternoon was “terrible for a feat of endurance of mind, stamina, muscle, and feet,” and candidly assessed the task of the runners as “perfectly appalling.” His description was apt—of the fifty-five runners who began the race, twenty-seven would not finish.

Pietri battled attrition better than most, and was first to approach the final lap at the Olympic stadium, three minutes ahead of the next runner, Johnny Hayes of the U.S. But as he entered the stadium, Pietri lost his mind and body to fatigue and dehydration. He took a wrong turn and was exhorted by race officials to turn around. His legs then failed him several times, and attendants emerged to help him along. “After the doctors had poured stimulants down his throat,” read a New York Timesreport the following day, “he was dragged to his feet, and finally was pushed across the line with one man at his back and another holding him by the arm.” Following a protest from Hayes, the helping hands were reasonably deemed sufficient grounds for disqualification. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle noted that “without help, Dorando must have lain senseless on the track.” But while Frederick Lorz had had difficulty shaking the “cheater” designation, the efforts of Pietri’s helpers did not sully him in the least. Queen Alexandra admired the dramatic finish enough to award him a gilded silver cup as compensation for his lost medal.

Evidently, spotting an illegitimate result is as old and as much a sport as the competitive marathon itself. These days, however, the tradition established by Spiridon Belokas is observed off the Olympic stage. Rosie Ruiz’s disqualification after winning the 1980 Boston Marathon by way of the subway remains the most notorious example, but each year brings more. Last October, in England, a runner named Rob Sloan was found to have taken a bus for six miles before finishing third in a marathon in Northumberland. The bus was a shuttle for race spectators, and witnesses identified him as having ridden it. Officials disqualified Sloan. He has maintained his innocence all the same, claiming a case of mistaken identity. The compulsive fascination with these capers is such that the British tabloid the Sun could scarcely contain its glee this past May, when it reported that Sloan was working for a bus company.

Given the widespread appeal of marathons and their typically massive scale, expect more such cases to follow. Time-chip technology has complicated matters, requiring a cutter to weave on and off the course in order to register at timing mats distributed along the way. The prospect of figuring out how many mats there are, where they are, and hitting them all while shortcutting the route and remaining undetected sounds even more daunting than simply running until you feel you might expire. As one race director remarked to Singer, “Think about how hard you have to work to not run a race.”